In Green's Jungles - Page 25/47

"Once in a while," I whispered, "when I'm nearly awake...

At times Sfido had an oily, almost feminine way of speaking that reminded me of one of the augurs at our schola; in it he said, "I'm terribly sorry, but your staff doesn't seem to have come with us, Rajan. I talked to Private Gevaar. He was the one who actually took it from you. He told me where he put it, but it doesn't seem to have been taken when we were."

I was thinking of the sun on Oreb's black wings, of Oreb as he had looked when he flew up in alarm from Scylla's shrine of twisting pillars on the cliffs above Lake Limna, and did not reply.

Fava asked someone, "Where did he put it?" and Patera Grig replied, "What difference does that make?"

A rougher voice with an undertone of cruelty in it: "Is he asleep?"

"No," the girl told him.

"Yes," I said; but I was not sure they heard me  -  Oreb fluttering up and away over blue water, a hint of blue upon one black wing. For a moment (if only for a moment) he seemed more real to me, the sable-and-scarlet bird flying beneath the slim golden bar of the Long Sun, than the hideous prison-room on Green in which I sat, or the snowy thornbushes under which I huddled with Fava. I may have heard the creaking of the hinges; now that all that horror is over and we have returned to Blue, I cannot be sure.

Certainly I heard the girl Fava's shout of surprise, and Kupus's incredulous "Gods doom!"

Then- "Bird back!"

I opened my eyes. Oreb was about the size of a child of four, with wings that seemed almost feathered arms; but he cocked his head at me as he always has, regarding me through one jet-black eye. "Good bird?"

"Good bird, Oreb. I'm very glad to see you."

"Good Silk!"

"He frequently calls me Silk," I explained to Kupus. "I believe it must have been the name of his former master, the man I set out to bring to my town of New Viron, but failed to bring. Silk is an aspect of Pas now."

Fava began, "He looks so different-"

"So do you," I told her.

Zepter asked, "Is that another inhumi?"

"I'm sure it isn't. Come over here, Oreb. You're too big to perch on my staff at present, I'm afraid. You'll have to walk for yourself, or fly. Can you still fly?"

"Bird fly!"

"I doubt it, but we'll soon see."

"Fish heads?"

Nodding, I stood up. "Certainly we'll need food if we're going to stay here indefinitely, and I doubt very much that the inhumi will feed us."

Fava rubbed her hands. "I'd like to eat right now. A small salad with some of that thick white dressing that Decina makes from eggs and olive oil, and maybe a slice of roast beef and some bread and butter." All that she was, was in her smile-the girl and the artful intelligence behind the girl's, and the torpid inhuma (dressed as dolls of painted wood are) who froze with me beneath leafless branches covered with snow through which there protruded, here and there, needle-sharp points of black.

"Girl thing?" Oreb was clearly puzzled.

"I would take that, too," I told Fava. "But if you're expecting me to conjure it out of the air for you, you'll be disappointed."

"Oh, no. I just wondered what you thought about the roast beef. Not terribly large and not too rare, if you please."

Zepter nodded, the nod of a man who takes food seriously. "I'm with you on that last one, Mora."

"I hope you'll be with her on a good may other things as well," I told him. "She supports Blanko and Inclito-"

"Papa? I certainly do!"

"To begin with. You oppose both, Lieutenant Zepter-or at least you have been opposing them up until now. Sfido, I don't think it's wise for you to let your hand stray to your needier like that."

The burly lieutenant turned on him with a low growl that might have come from the throat of a large and suspicious dog.

"Your own loyalty to Duko Rigoglio does you credit," I told Sfido, "but you cannot keep these troopers loyal to him by force."

I spoke to Kupus. "When we had our meeting yesterday, Captain, there were four of your officers present. Lieutenant Zepter is here with us, which leaves three unaccounted for." I indicated the other side of the room by a gesture. "Are they over there?"

He nodded.

"Then call them. No, call everyone."

Kupus raised his left arm, moving his hand in circles. "On me!"

"We will reconvene that meeting," I told Sfido. "Has it occurred to you yet that this girl and I, and all the mercenaries of Captain Kupus's company might go back to Blue in some fashion, leaving you here?"

He stared at me without speaking, and at last shook his head.

"It will. You have seen nothing of Green yet, Captain. Nothing beyond this room. When you have slept in her swamps and jungles, and seen the City of the Inhumi, it will occur to you at every breath."

"I will not betray Soldo," Sfido declared.

"I would not ask you to," I told him.

Oreb sprang into the air, his clumsy wings flailing. "Men come!"

I waved to them. "Lieutenant Karabin? I don't know the names of your brother officers. Perhaps you could introduce them."

Kupus said, "I should have myself. Go ahead, Karabin."

"Yes, sir." Like Zepter he had a bristling mustache, but he was tall and rather slender, and his was black. "You and I haven't met formally yet, Rajan." He offered his hand, and I shook it.

"This is Lieutenant Warren, and this is Lieutenant Wight. They're from the same town. We don't have two officers from the same town very often."

I shook hands with both. "May I ask without offense how a mercenary becomes an officer?"

Wight said, "We're elected by our men, Rajan. We formed my platoon, and then we elected sergeants and a lieutenant."

"You?" Fava asked, and he nodded.

Kupus said, "We elected me captain once the lieutenants had been decided on. After that, the First Platoon had to elect one of the sergeants lieutenant, and choose a new sergeant."

By the time he had finished speaking, the men were all gathered around us, which had been my chief purpose in asking the question. Most were staring at Oreb, and I waited a moment more for them to assuage their curiosity, smiling and nodding to every man who wore a headcloth.

"Watch out!" Oreb muttered, and I nodded. What I planned to do, or at least planned to try to do, was fully as chancy as letting my legs hang over the prow of the Trivigaunti airship; but I needed to understand the extent of my powers in what I still thought of then as a nightmare that I shared with Fava, and this would delineate them as nothing else could have.

"Troopers," I began, "you deserve to know why I'm doing what I'm going to do, and what I expect from you. I'm going to explain all that, and it won't take long. To start with, we're on Green, the green whorl that you've seen in the sky since you were children. Green is the breeder of storms and the breeding grounds of the inhumi."

There was a rattle of excited talk.

"Some of you may doubt that we're really here. I won't argue the point-you'll be convinced soon enough. A minute ago, I was about to explain to your officers how I thought we could get back to our own whorl. I said I'd do it, if they'd give me back my staff. I'll make you the same offer: give my staff back, and I'll explain how we may-I said may-be able to get back home."

I stood silently then, concentrating, and let them talk. After some minutes, Gorak approached me. "We haven't got it, Rajan."

"Do you still consider yourselves troopers in the Duko of Soldo's horde, Sergeant?"

"If you're asking me personally, Rajan-"

"I'm asking about the whole company," I told him firmly. "Do you?"

At my elbow, Kupus said, "Yes."

His tone had been at least as firm as mine. After looking for a moment into that hard-featured, somewhat fleshy face, I shrugged and raised my voice. "In that case, I'm going to tell you nothing more, and leave you here." Closing my eyes, I extended my hands before me, and thought with all my might of the sword the Neighbor had revealed to me. I do not mean that I described it to myself in so many words, saying that the blade was black and keen, and all the rest. Instead, I recalled its weight in my hand, and the bitter edge that had killed so many inhumi and severed the head of the spitting horror.

I heard the hiss of a hundred indrawn breaths, and a little gasp from Fava. To me, I thought, to me! I extended my right hand as I had offered it to the lieutenants. And something hard, cold, and hauntingly familiar grasped it from within.

Chapter 14

Duko Rigoglio

I opened my eyes. The blade was somewhat darker, if anything; its curve may have been a shade less pronounced.

Sfido was goggling at me, his mouth gaping. "You have your needier," I told him, "and these troopers of yours, slug guns. Surely you won't begrudge me a mere sword."

Pushing past him, I began to tap the mottled gray flagstones with the point, willing one to sound hollow. "Here," I said at the third, "lift it for me, please, Fava. Help her, Oreb."

Together they did, struggling with its weight until Sergeant Gorak stepped forward to add his much greater strength to theirs. At once the stink of rotting flesh seemed to fill the whole chamber. Steep stairs, narrow and treacherous with slime, descended from the opening. I told Fava, "You had better precede me. It may be dangerous down there, but it would be worse for you to remain up here alone."

She nodded, hesitated, and at length took the first step, shuddering.

"You too, Oreb. Take care of her."

"Bird go?" he croaked doubtfully. (His voice was exactly as it had always been, though he had come to seem a sort of clumsy, feathered dwarf, and I had seen undulant arms wrestling with the flagstone as well as his now-armlike wings.) "Bird save?"

"Yes," I told him firmly. "Bird save. Protect her as much as you can. Go on, Oreb."

Fava's head sank out of sight below the level of the floor. Oreb started forward, flinched in a way I found very human, then dove after her, spreading his stubby wings almost before they were clear of the rectangular opening.

"Good-bye," I told the mercenary troopers peering into it. "This is a hard road and a dangerous one, but in the end it may lead us home. You will be safe here, I believe, until you die."

"Rajan!" Twenty hands at least reached out to stop me.

Kupus pushed his men aside, aiming his needier at my head. "You are our prisoner."

"No." I stepped down. "There cannot be a prisoner of a prisoner, Captain. We are prisoners, you and I-the prisoners of the inhumi who rule this whorl. But I intend to escape them, if I can."

Fava's voice reached me, distant and hollow. "Incanto! There's a man down here!"

Thinking that she had come upon the blind man I remembered, I nodded and went down into the opening.

Querulously, a voice behind me ventured, "Rajan

...?"

Recognizing it as Sfido's, I turned. "Yes? What is it, Captain?"

"May I...? May we come with you?" He was crouching at the edge of the opening.

"No," I told him. "But they may go with you, to the place to which you go. You're their leader. You are Duko Rigoglio's representative, and their commanding officer."

Oreb sailed past, his tubby body and stubby wings suggesting an airship in miniature. "Man come!"

I stepped off the narrow stair, which disappeared as my foot left it.

"Rajan!"

It was Sfido again; I stopped and looked back up at him. "I thought I'd asked you not to call me that. I can tolerate it from the men I knew in Gaon; but when you use it, it puts us both in false positions."

"This hole." I watched him choke back the title he wished to give me. "It's getting smaller."

I waved, told him that I wished them all well, and left him.

A new voice called, "It's me, sir. Lieutenant Valico."

Darkness had closed about me with Sifido's last, despairing cry. Very much afraid of falling, I halted and opened my hand. The light the Neighbor had given me gleamed in a crease in my palm; as I focused my attention upon it, it grew stronger. I held it up and looked around me.

The sewer was a flattened oval, its thick obsidian walls cracked and near collapse. A trickle of water ran along its bottom some considerable distance below the narrow walkway on which I stood; a man's rotting corpse sprawled there, half in and half out of the dark water, a patient traveler waiting for a current strong enough to move him.

"Incanto!" It was Fava, the fact confirmed by Oreb, who sailed past me calling, "Girl say!"

Holding my light higher, I caught sight of her some distance down the sewer.

"He says we're all asleep!"

Valico himself called, "It's true, sir. I-I mean that's how it looked."

I nodded to myself. "Can you see the opening from where you are, Lieutenant?"

"No, sir."

It was night in that case, I thought. Night, or we had far to go.

As I drew nearer, Fava said, "He was looking for us, Incanto. Inclito sent him. I mean, Papa did."

Valico nodded. "Are you really the general's brother, sir?"

"Why do you ask?"

"It's what a lot of people were saying when he came back and you stayed in his place, sir. They say you're his older brother, and you stayed behind with your father when him and his mother left Grandecitta, and you've come to Blanko to help him out."

I smiled, although I doubt that Valico saw it. "And what does General Inclito himself say?"

"Nothing, sir. Colonel Bello asked him point-blank, but he wouldn't talk about it."

"No doubt that's wise. Let us be wise, too, Lieutenant."

"Sir...?"

Fava said, "He can't understand how you brought him here. Neither can I, Incanto. How you do this?"

"We brought him," I told her. "Or at any rate I believe we did, that both of us are necessary for it to take place. I want to talk to you about that, and about the Vanished People, when we're alone. Meanwhile, you must remember what happened in Inclito's house, shortly before you left."